The million-dollar question is when Nicaragua’s time will come, but Murillo is determined to crown herself in 2027 in yet another electoral farce.
By Carlos F. Chamorro (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES — Over the past 10 years, the Ortega-Murillo family dictatorship has been placing itself “under the horses’ hooves,” escalating authoritarian aggression against its own people and crossing every imaginable red line, in defiance of the basic norms of international law.
Since 2018, they have massacred and persecuted thousands of citizens who demanded free elections, crushed democracy, committed crimes against humanity, and carried out the greatest acts of public corruption in Nicaragua’s history.
In 2019, they buried dialogue with the opposition, hardened the police state, and refused to be held accountable before the Organization of American States for serious violations of human rights and democracy.
In 2021, they showed the world the illegitimacy of their government when Ortega stole the elections by reelecting himself without political competition, after imprisoning all the opposition presidential pre-candidates.
In response to demands from the OAS and the European Union, they defied the international community with blatant arrogance, as if they were endowed with eternal power and immunity from justice.
Ortega and Murillo ordered Nicaragua’s withdrawal from the OAS, confiscated its headquarters in Managua, and expelled the ambassadors of the European Union, the Netherlands, the Vatican, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, and Spain.
They broke relations with Taiwan to throw themselves into the arms of the People’s Republic of China, and the only result has been an invasion of Chinese stores, the voracity of its mining companies, and 13 loans on onerous terms that have increased the country’s external debt.
In 2022, during Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, the supposed heirs of Sandino, Ortega and Murillo, aligned themselves with Vladimir Putin, applauding a criminal invasion against the national sovereignty of Ukraine.
Even as late as the end of 2024, the dictatorship openly provoked the United States by using Managua’s international airport as a springboard to promote illegal migration—not only of Cubans and Haitians, but also through extra-continental charter flights from Libya, Senegal, India, Morocco, and other countries, transporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who, after paying the bribe to the “commander and the compañera” at the airport, continued on their route toward the United States.
In 2025, they had the audacity to illegally confiscate the American mining company BHMB, handing its concession and investment over to a Chinese firm allied with corrupt associates of the regime.
The first complaints from the Trump administration over violations of the CAFTA treaty, confiscations, political prisoners, and the illegality of the “co-presidency” have been ignored by the dynastic regime.
But since the “extraction” of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela by a US military intervention on January 3, 2026, there has been panic inside the El Carmen bunker at the moment of greatest international isolation for the dictatorship.
“And now who will defend us?” the co-dictators cry, in the face of the imposition of US oversight over the Venezuelan regime and the economic and political collapse of Cuba, besieged by the United States’ oil blockade.
“Where are China and Russia, our protectors and strategic allies?” the political-military leadership asks.
“What comes after the US military bombing of our twin brother in Iran, the repressive regime of the ayatollahs?” the regime’s operators wonder.
But is anyone really going to stick their neck out to save a family dictatorship that has sunk Nicaragua into becoming the second most corrupt country in Latin America?
The 25 generals—whose chief, Julio Cesar Aviles, surrendered the Nicaraguan Army to the dictatorship—know that in a possible scenario of “maximum external pressure,” neither China nor Russia will lift a finger to prolong Ortega and Murillo’s stay in power.
They belong to the same club of the “indefensible” as Nicolas Maduro and Ayatollah Khamenei. But in reality, Nicaragua is not on the radar of US foreign policy priorities, which are focused on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and other regional conflict zones. Nor is there the threat of an imminent attack. Still, the new international scenario makes the unviability of a dynastic dictatorship in Latin America increasingly evident—one that has been massively rejected by its own people.
When will the time come for the Ortega-Murillos? That is the million-dollar question that everyone in Nicaragua—including the Sandinistas themselves—is asking.
However, in Rosario Murillo’s alternative reality, the co-dictator’s plan is to seal the dynastic succession in November 2027, crowning herself in yet another electoral farce without political competition and under a police state. Once again, Murillo is determined to place her decrepit dictatorship “under the horses’ hooves,” and the inevitable outcome will be a worsening of the national crisis.
Nicaragua urgently needs a way out now, without waiting for the crisis to collapse in November 2027. The exit begins with unity in action among the opposition, the release of all political prisoners, the suspension of the police state, and the return to Nicaragua of all those banished and exiled, with guarantees of security.
The suspension of the police state is only the first step toward clearing the path for electoral reform—without Daniel Ortega or Rosario Murillo—to hold new free elections and begin a democratic transition.
Certainly, co-dictator Rosario Murillo may entrench herself in power for some time longer, but this will only increase both international and domestic pressure demanding the end of the family dictatorship.
Meanwhile, public servants—both civilian and military—still have the option of becoming part of a national solution. Otherwise, the Army, the Police, and the Sandinista Party also run the risk of sinking along with the ruling family.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
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